My Buy Essay

More and more online businesses and internet marketers are recognizing the tremendous benefits and responsiveness that multimedia generates when used as an advertising medium and marketing strategy.

For those that utilize multimedia effectively, significant increases in buy rates, conversion rates and subscription rates have been experienced and all within a very short period of time. However, many believe that just adding any old media content, such as video and audio onto their website will generate significant increases in visitor responsiveness regardless of content presentation, quality, and other attributes that contribute to a positive experience for the website visitor. Just so that we are clear, this assertion is very wrong and can have potentially negative consequences from a marketing and/or advertising standpoint.

My philosophy is quite simple. Using multimedia to advertise your product or service needs to follow the same basic rules and principles as would apply to any other strategy or medium that can be used to convert prospects into subscribers and buyers. Yes, multimedia does improve conversion rates but it has to be done right and convey professionalism. This is absolutely essential.

When it comes to video and audio content online, what’s often been the case is that those who have tried to add this type of media content to their websites have unfortunately had disastrous results. For example, with video content, many have added videos to their webpages that are of extremely poor quality, small and ugly. The overall experience for the viewer – Poor. One of the biggest problems has been the fact that the videos load very slowly. Visitors are turned off completely by the fact that they have to wait for minutes, even longer sometimes in order for the video or audio file to start playing. This, unfortunately, is a result of these webmasters using cookie-cutter solutions to add video or audio content to their site without really knowing the implications and limitations. As I said, with multimedia…either do it right or don’t do it at all. For those who do their research and take a little time to produce video and audio content that is of good quality, the results have been tremendous.

Bottom Line: If you want to capture the attention of your visitors,you need to use top notch technology to bring your message to that person and provides the viewer with a positive experience.

If you do plan on adding video and audio content to your website, here are a few simple guidelines to follow when determining what the best multimedia solution is for you:

1. Cost Effective: You need a solution that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg and leaves you with great video and/or audio content on your website but flat broke.

2. Fast loading Media Content (Video/Audio) that can play almost immediately. Website visitors are fickle and inpatient so its not wise to keep them waiting when trying to view your video advertisement or listen to your audio message.

3. Superior Website Integration: Video and Audio Content that can appear to be seamlessly Integrated into your websites and emails. Viewers don’t have to view video and audio ads with media player’s that annoyingly pop-up on top of their internet browsers and distract them from the rest of your website.

4. Superior Customization: Video and Audio Advertisements that can be customized for your websites and emails based on your specific requirements.

5. The ability to handle a large volume of simultaneous visitors.

6. Large-Scale Playability: Viewing/Listening DOES NOT require the download of additional plug-ins. Don’t make your visitors have to download any special software to view or listen to the video and audio content on your website.

7. The media content needs to be of reasonably good quality and resolution. Don’t worry, you don’t need Lord of the Rings quality to provide your website visitors with a positive experience. They won’t expect perfect quality but you need to make sure that the content is of good quality.

Of course, we can get into specific details about each one of these things but we won’t get into that in this article. These are just high-level, general guidelines that you can follow when shopping around for a good multimedia solution for your business.

Multimedia does have impressive results from a marketing perspective. That’s why the big companies and brand names are utilizing multimedia content to sell their products and services. However, not everyone has the exact same budget and requirements and if you are looking for a multimedia solution you need to spend some time shopping around to find a solution that offers the best bang for the buck.

Are you fully leveraging the power of the Internet with your marketing efforts?

It’s kind of amazing, but I still meet lots of small business owners who don’t think the Internet is crucial for their success. “I’m just a small local business. I don’t think the Internet is necessarily the right place for me to focus my marketing efforts.” I’m still hearing this sentiment from many a small business owner.

Hey, I was one of those people for almost a year with my own business. And I’ve set my stall out as a small business marketing guy.

Listen, whether you’re trying to get people’s attention from half-way around the world or just half-way around the block, you need to consider the power of the Internet. More and more people are turning to the Internet before (or in lieu of ever) turning to the yellow pages. That’s true even when they’re looking for things in their own town.

It’s a place where people go to begin gathering information to make a decision. It’s the place where people prefer to start when someone has made a referral or recommendation. It’s the place people would generally prefer to go after they’ve met you at a networking event and were interested enough to know more.

The Internet is not going away. In fact, the trends show us that it’s becoming a more and more integral part of the communication media we depend on. Anybody notice how interested the cable companies, phone companies, and cell phone service companies have become in putting out products and services that work with the Internet?

Are you fully leveraging the power of the Internet with your marketing efforts yet? Do you have a web site? Email newsletter? Blog? Podcast? Vlog?

Does the mere mention of all these terms intimidate and overwhelm you? Don’t let it.

You don’t have to do all of these things at once. Make this the year that you begin leveraging the Internet to grow your small business.

But, the power of the Internet is something you simply can’t ignore if you really want to take your business to great new heights. Make a commitment to learn more about this powerful, ever changing medium called the Internet. And then pull out your marketing plan and figure out how to make it fit into your strategy.

After spending a lot of time and effort on building a site, many wonder where they should start with Internet marketing. Site owners can be bombarded with pitches about marketing and it is hard to sort out what should be done. In this article, a short term marketing strategy is discussed.

Short Term Marketing Strategy

The single best short term marketing strategy is pay-per-click marketing campaigns. A “PPC” campaign simply involves placing advertisements on the results pages of search engines. In essence, you open an account with the PPCs, develop a list of keywords and create ads for those keywords. The two best PPC platforms are Google Adwords and Overture.

Google Adwords lets you place ads on Google search results. In addition to its own search engine, Google also supplies search results to AOL and other sites. When you create your ads, you can choose to place your ads on “content” or “search” results. Select only “search” results until you are sure the advertisement and your site coverts traffic into revenues.

Yahoo purchased Overture a few years ago for 1.8 billion dollars. Overture places advertisements on search results for MSN and, ta da, Yahoo among others. To build your ads, you search for keywords from a list provided by the PPC and create individuals ads. It can take a long time, but it is worth it.

Which PPC is Best?

Both Google and Overture have serious benefits. Google will send more traffic to your site than Overture. Getting your ad in front of AOL users is particularly advantageous because AOL users are buyers. For whatever reason, they simply seem to be more amenable to buying what you’re selling.

If Google is so great, why use Overture? In many ways, Overture has serious advantages over Google Adwords. One of the biggest advantages involves the size of ads.

To effectively run a profitable PPC campaign, you must get the maximum bang for your buck. One strategy for doing this is to qualify your traffic by explaining details in your description. If you only carry one model of a product, say that so money isn’t wasted with people who are looking for a different model clicking on your ad. With Google, you only get two to three words in your title and 8 to 10 in your description.

PPC advertising is a tremendous short term marketing strategy for a number or reasons. First, the advertising gets traffic to your site immediately. Second, it allows you to test the ability of your site to convert traffic into dollars. If conversions are low, you can modify the site and get immediate feedback.

If its time to get working on your marketing, research the PPC possibilities. Google Adwords and Overture have a lot to offer.

Once your site is up and running, the best method for getting immediate traffic is pay-per-click search engine marketing. Although you have to be patient, you should also be focusing on search engine optimization as a long term strategy.

Search Engine Optimization &ndash “SEO”

Search engine optimization, or “seo” as it is better known, is the definitive long term Internet marketing strategy. So, what is it? Seo simply refers to taking steps to make sure your site appears high in non-paid search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

The reason seo is considered a long term strategy is…well, it takes a long time. If your marketing is focusing on highly competitive keywords, such as “Europe travel”, there is so much competition that you could be looking at two or three years before getting top rankings. The time period is really a factor of how fast you can build links. Sometimes you can move up within 6 months, but sometimes it takes a few years.

Is it worth it to wait for 2 years to get into the top five for “Europe travel”? There are over 2,000,000 searches a month for the keyword phrase. What do you think? If you offer a service or product related to traveling in Europe, how much money would you make if even 1 million people visited your site each month? Think about that.

The Big Three

There are three, and only three, search engines that matter when it comes to seo &ndash Google, Yahoo and MSN. What about Alta Vista, etc.? They simply don’t have enough traffic to make them worth pursuing.

There are four keys to seo. First, you must research the amount of traffic various keywords are receiving. Second, you must modify your site to include the exact keywords phrases in the meta tagging and text. Third, you must add and add and add content to your site. The more content, the more the big three will like your site. Finally, you must trade links with other sites that have content related to your site.

The keys to pursuing a seo marketing strategy are discipline and patience. Let’s take a quick look at each.

You must have the discipline to stick with your seo effort when you are seeing no results. The desire to throw one’s arms in the air in frustration is going to be strong. Just remember that every step you take today will pay off down the road.

Patience balances feelings of frustration and you are going to have a lot of those. Look, it is going to take a long time, so resist the urge to whine. Stick a sign up over your desk counting off the months or have a regular exercise routine. If nothing else, you can day dream about all of the free traffic you are going to get one day.

Search engine optimization is not for the weak of mind or impatient. If you can stick with it, this long term marketing strategy always pays off.

Without a doubt, if you asked me, Shane if there was only 1 marketing strategy that you could use on the Internet, what would it be? Without hesitation I would say joint Ventures. Joint Ventures are easily the most lucrative Marketing Strategy ever invented and if you learn to do it right, will likely be the ONLY marketing strategy you will ever need to use.

A Good Internet Joint Venture is your shortcut to success. It can send you more qualified internet traffic rushing to your site in the shortest amount of time than anything I’ve ever seen! And it can mean bringing your product to market without spending one single penny of your own money!

In it’s simplest form, Joint Ventures have to do with 2 businesses (or more) joining forces to leverage off of each others success, assets and/or expertise. There are hundreds of different variations but let me just give you one simple example:

One variation of a simple type of joint venture partnership used most frequently would be where one business provides a product for sale, the sales message and the product delivery while the other business provides the recommendation for that product to their own list of subscribers/prospects and receiving a commission based on the sales generated through that recommendation.

The benefits are great. You can build your subscriber list, leverage off of your partners infrastructure like using their existing servers, software etc where you don’t have to pay a dime. If you pick the right JV partner, you can acquire instant credibility and reputation with their customers and lists. Credibility sells. Let me give you an example, if you created a book on “how to acquire real estate”, you could certainly make MANY more sales if you JV’d with Donald Trump and put his name on the book as the co-author, building your reputation and increasing your credibility at the same time. Are you starting to see the incredible power of this strategy?

Now I know that some people may think that Joint Ventures are difficult to do,but if they are telling you this, then I wouldn’t take anything they tell you at face value because they’re either lying to you or don’t understand it themselves.

Let me show you how easy it is. Here’s typically what I do when rolling out a new product. In this example, let’s pretend that I just completed a new ebook on Penny Stock Trading and have setup a web site with an affiliate program. I would go to google, do a search on keywords like “penny stock”, “penny stock trading”, “stock market strategies” etc..you get the picture. The top sites on the first page are typically your target partners because since they appear on the first page you can bet they have lots of business, traffic, subscribers and customers. I would visit each site to make sure that they are right for my product and then I would first send them a very brief email asking them if they would be interested in marketing my product in exchange for a high commission as an incentive.

Typically in this email you should briefly introduce yourself and your product. Describe your product and the benefits it would offer to their Newsletter subscribers, customers and/or web site visitors. Ask them politely if they wouldn’t mind responding to you asap and provide your contact information if they are interested in marketing your product. Also very important, you need to give them access to this product FOR FREE!..so that they can review the product and feel comfortable about endorsing it. These site owners have spent years building their business, lists and cultivating their lists to be very responsive. Any endorsement they do to their huge lists could mean thousands of dollars in your pocket for very little effort.

then, go thru the same process for all the other appropriate sites under that keyword and send JV proposal letters over and over again. Then repeat that process for other relevant keywords until you’re finished.

Understandably, this can be a very time consuming task which is why I developed a piece of software that will automate this whole process for me at .jvmining.com. I can now get all of this done in a matter of minutes!

Remember if just a few of these super affiliates decides to market your product you’re golden. Once they contact you all you need to do is setup their affiliate account and commission. This will ensure that their commission will be calculated properly when they endorse your product to their list. If you send these offers to just 10 sites per day, Within a week you’ll be on your way to making thousands of dollars per month, all for 5 hours worth of work and at NO COST to you. Isn’t that easy?

That’s all there is to it.

The following are 10 simple yet very powerful ways to increase your sales significantly:

1. When you make your first sale, follow-up with the customer. You could follow-up with a “thank you” email and include an advertisement for other products you sell. You could follow-up with them regularly. The goal is to begin building a relationship with your customers so you need to keep in constant contact with them.

2. You could upsell to your customers. When they’re at your order page, tell them about a few extra related products you have for sale. They could just add it to their original order.

3. Tell your customers if they refer four customers to your web site, they will receive a full rebate of their purchase price. This will turn one sale into three sales.

4. When you sell a product, give your customers the option of joining an affiliate program so they can make commissions selling your product. This will multiply the sale you just made.

5. Sell the reprint/reproduction rights to your products. You could include an ad on or with the product for other products you sell. You could make sales for the reproduction rights and sales on the back end product.

6. You could cross promote your product with other businesses’ products in a package deal. You can include an ad or flyer for other products you sell and have other businesses selling for you.

7. When you ship out or deliver your product, include a coupon for other related products you sell in the package. This will attract them to buy more products from you.

8. Send your customers a catalog of add-on products for the original product they purchased. This could be upgrades, special services, attachments, etc. If they enjoy your product they will buy the extra add-ons.

9. Sell gift certificates for your products. You’ll make sales from the purchase of the gift certificate, when the recipient cashes it in. They could also buy other items from your web site.

10. Send your customers free products with their product package. The freebies should have your ad printed on them. It could be bumper stickers, ball caps, t-shirts etc. This will allow other people to see your ad and order.

There you go. The great thing about these powerful strategies is that you can implement them immediately. As I said, they are easy to start using but the outcome could be a substantial increase in your conversion and/or buy rate which is the ultimate goal. It is extremely important to make your customer and/or prospect feel special and to provide them with additional value-added items that will keep them coming back.